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When I wrote the post below, “A Touch of Fey,” last Tuesday I didn’t know that SNL was doing a summer edition of Weekend Update, or that Tina Fey was going to make a surprise stellar appearance eating sheet cake! So this warrants more than a coda, and I see that on Twitter and Facebook her coping advice for weathering the current turmoil is “trending” big time. As media savvy people say, her appearance received a lot of “buzz” and went “viral.” It was courageous, funny, and her trademark razor sharp authentic humor, as always, was in fine form.

When I went to look for the video of her “stress eating” I saw several articles from venerable periodicals like The Washington Post and The Atlantic ruminating of what has been labeled “The Fey Effect.” Apparently this dates back to 2012 (how do I miss these things?). The Atlantic defines it as follows: “Fey’s jokes,…had proven comedy’s power, especially in times of question and perhaps also in times of crisis, to shape people’s sense of the world. The jokes had woven themselves into the workings of American democracy. The researchers called it the Fey Effect.” In other words, she’s funny and people talk about it over the literal and virtual “water cooler.”

I suppose not all of this is news to most, but it was to me, and I felt somewhat pleased with myself that I had my own uninfluenced take on Tina’s power. And, the SNL appearance validated “A Touch of Fey” all the more. Yard sale Barbie….That’s a good one. Jealous? No, not at all – we dearly need to laugh and eat cake.

Clare Irwin

P.S. Relevant to nothing, when Fey was still doing Weekend Update, she made a hilarious (and so true) slightly off color joke about Colin Farrell and his head being in the way. I’ve never been able to watch anything with Farrell in it without thinking of that joke. Took the air right out of him. Look it up!